Anyone Here Diagnosed Schizoid?

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I asked about these because Starkid's neuropsych testing included both:

Memory testing: Wechsler Memory scale

and

Executive Function testing: Wisconsin Card Sorting Task, Tower of London

I was just in the middle of reading a sentence, the beginning of which I'd already forgotten, when it occurred to me that at least one WMS subtest is fundamentally flawed. All of the items to be remembered are common nouns, and therefore easy to visualize (which I did, rather vividly, in fact). That made them much easier to remember than they would have been had I relied on auditory memory alone, as my auditory memory is rather poor (I struggle to remember multi-step directions).

The structure of this test therefore puts it at risk for false negatives, especially as part of an assessment of a population (autistic and Asperger's people) that is known to rely disproportionately on visual thinking. A better test of verbal working memory would include a proportion of words that more closely reflects the patterns of everyday speech: verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and so forth.

I also did well on the Digit Span of the WAIS-IV, which shocked me. The same mechanism was at play: I visualized the numbers in bright yellow on the desk in front of me and manipulated the relative positions of these virtual pictures when I had to recite them backwards and in numerical order.

I was asking about the memory test results, because it is something that I have become quite curious about. As I am beginning to sense that my memory deficiencies, particularly those involved with processing complex information, seem to explain many of my difficulties with socializing, learning, etc.

Your thoughts on altering the test format are interesting. Though, I have doubts if an altered test format would have changed my test results. See, I scored quite low for Visual Memory (12 percentile), Immediate Memory (13 percentile), Delayed Memory (14 percentile), and Auditory Memory (25 percentile).

It’s funny that, before I was diagnosed, I thought I had a fairly average memory. Now, that I know better.

I've to say, I don't care much anymore with what I'm dx officially with. It depends a lot to which psychiatrist you go, what they are specialised in and other subjective decisions. For example, when a clinic has a therapy program for a certain disorder or the insurance pays for a certain treatment having a certain disorder, than there is a higher probability getting this disorder diagnosed. Also psychiatry isn't 100% objective, it's all a matter of interpretation and some ppl are clear cut cases, others aren't. My opinion is that our brain can't get queesed that easily into the diagnostic categories we invented.
If you are unsure, you should get a second opinion.

My therapist once asked me schizoid questions, but I don't think that he thinks that I'm a schizoid. I actually don't care much what he thinks, what I could have, so I don't even talk with him about those things. This is because my psychiatrist diagnoses me and he would never ever diagnose me with schizoid PD.

I was dx several times with some form of autism in the past. My current psychiatrist doesn't think I'm autistic and thinks it could be schizotypal PD instead. I think both is true to some degree, maybe McDD. I've clearly autistic thinking patterns since being very little and even as a baby I showed signs of sensory issues. My schizotypal symptoms started years later, around puberty I would guess.

I think that is a healthy attitude to have, perhaps one that fellow WP members could make use of. Some of the things people post on this site make me wonder if they are too caught up in the idea of Asperger's or autism as an identity, so caught up that they are either afraid to pursue a diagnosis because the doctor might "invalidate" their identity, or they can't or won't accept the results of the assessment(s) they've already had. I don't accuse anyone, I just wonder.

Personally, I have come to the same attitude as you've come to (I don't disagree with the diagnoses I was given, by the way). I've had what seemed like some half-assed diagnoses handed to me, and I was frustrated that the doctors seemed to have missed or discounted symptoms, given me shady tests (or no tests, in one case), and misinterpreted results, and so I was on the warpath to get another assessment, a "real" assessment, and so forth; and this was exacerbated by my endless feelings of being misunderstood, which are far and away my most troubling pet peeve (and a large reason for the schizoid presentation, ironically). But now I know that it is foolhardy to expect anyone to see who I "really am" over the course of a few hours worth of assessment, and that diagnoses based on these assessments will necessarily be approximate. They will never be fully-assed, even if made by a psychologist whom I saw regularly.

In addition, reading posts from some of these "identity Aspies" put the idea in my mind that certain kinds of antagonism or distrust towards mental health professionals (or unprofessionals) is a toxic, unrealistic, and fruitless state of mind for me, and that I must accept their mistakes and oversights as part of the nature of humans and the state of contemporary psychology and simply account for it in my expectations.

So now I look at diagnoses in a more practical matter, although neuropsychological tests have become a new interest of mine and I am burning a bit to share with the person who examined me my insights concerning the WMS.
I'm kind of unsatisfied with this post, but I can't pinpoint why and I'm tired of editing it, so here it is.

It's nit just here like this, it's a general phenomena. I think it is because autism is required to be a neurodevelomental disorder a person is born with and most other psychiatric disorders are not. Especially PDs are stigmatised, it's like ppl would "want" to act this way, but it's not that easy and also PDs are highly complex, especially the schizoid PD. It's very interesting though and when you read into the schizoid-literature, you'll find out things, even most psychiatrists wouldn't know.
I don't have a problem myself with the thought, that some of my behaviours are schizotypal and that I've a mixture out of both, autistic traits and schizotypal traits (if not even a full blown schizotypal PD, what I suspect). But I noticed that some of my autistic friends react very strange to this fact. I've to say, I didn't know it a few years ago, or wasn't so sure about it. So some of my behaviours and thought patterns got interpreted differently in the mean time. For some of my autistic friends that's difficult to deal with I noticed. Like I would be a totally different person now or something. And even if I tell them, they keep ignoring it. I told one autistic friend the other day (and we talk about a lot of stuff) that I suffered from de realisation recently and she didn't say anything, NOTHING.
So, I just shut up about it.

i also respect psychiatrists, like mine, who dx very careful and can admit when they've been wrong, BUT the problem is, that there are many out there, who diagnose way too fast, not take constructive criticism seriously and are way too arrogant and proud p, when they've been wrong. I respect if they don't know everything, but in my case, I had a huge battle with the psychiatry in my city, who claimed they had found out, wishing a few minutes(!) that I can't be transsexual and even kept their opinion after me taking hormones, my name chance and a surgery. It was ridicules. But when even my insurance was on my side, they wrote me, that they wouldn't question my transsexualism anymore and this after 4 1/2 years. Just because they didn't wanted to admit before that they made a mistake in the beginning. It was totally ridiculous. But now I'm glad that it's all over.
I'm also glad that I found a psychiatrist who doesn't make me paranoid, what's a huuuuge thing for me.

What I find fascinating about Asperger’s is what Adamantium wrote in a recent thread (that, the symptoms of Asperger’s are “part of a pattern and the result of a neurological difference”).

So, I personally love patterns. I like looking for patterns in everything. I suppose, even when they don’t exist. LOL.

Anyways, I am always interested in understanding how others are similar to or different than me. Which is why I was so interested in your WMS test results. Ultimately, I am looking for cause/effect relationships (e.g. why does my issues with complex memory lead to this behavior or that).

Hello Rocket,

I can understand quite well that you don't really relate to ppl with schizoid PD. I've the same thing, but still a bit different. I relate to some degree to ppl with autism, but then there are differences and I relate to ppl with schizotypal PD, but not that much as to ppl with autism, because of the NT-way of thinking they have, but I don't have. I think autistic ppl tend to think that it's one or the other and the diagnostic criteria are a bit tricky here, because they exclude one from the other. But to see it logical, if schizoid PD is a PD, than autistic ppl can also develop it. Autistics are not imune towards certain PDs. This just doesn't make sence. Also the psyche of a person is highly complex and the psychiatric diagnosis we have are just tools to help us to understand what is going on in the mind of a person. I've an old psychiatry book about aspergers at home, claiming that schizoid PD and aspergers are on the same continuum, but that Aspergers is supposed to be more severe. I don't fully agree with it, but also that both can't be officially dx together, shows how much overlapping they are. So, what to do with a person for example, who has some autistic symptoms, but not enough for a diagnosis, but would theoretically fit in the diagnostic criteria of schizoid PD? It's just a thought...

Some are neurotypical, but its not quite that simple....for one people on the autism spectrum, or other neurological conditions to develop co-morbid Personality Disorders. Also neurological differences may be a factor in some of them, though that is unclear as far as I know. It would seem in psychology a lot more is unknown or hasn't been adequately studied then is known and has been....the human brain is a more complex place than one would think apparently.

If symptoms of a Personality Disorder better account for the 'autism' symptoms, or the other way around then usually just one diagnoses would be given....otherwise they can diagnose both. So one could be on the autism spectrum and be diagnosed as Schizoid. There is some overlap with the those two as well.

I know I scored high on a test in the Schizoid PD area, but the counseler/therapist thought the ASD was more likely, though at the time the term aspergers syndrome was still in the DSM so we went with that. But basically I had too much of a desire for friends/relationships even though I tend not to have a lot, so that was one of the main reasons. Cannot remember all the reasons the aspergers was decided on. According to some of my records I have traits of Avoident P.D...and before I got an official diagnoses I scored pretty high on a few online testes for schizotypal PD, but that is supposed to develop I had weird experiences since I can remember though a lot more when I was a child. If anyone seen game of thrones the young Stark child that cannot walk has weird dreams of things to come and stuff like that which I can relate to. Those experiences didn't develop over time, in fact if anything those 'abilities' or whatever have weakened if anything...in some contexts and book series/movies I like that is a skill not something to diagnose...

Though there's been a few kind of pesky 'shades' lately you could call them or dark figures that disappear when you try to look at them. But yeah in general I don't talk about that stuff a whole lot to mental health professionals unless its a confidential therapist who is more open minded, like right now the therapist I have has to keep everything confidential unless its plans to harm myself or others though the others part doesn't really apply but it was on the document as well.

Pretty sure they can if one disorder does not better account for all the symptoms of the second suspected disorder. Though that would be somewhat difficult to figure out probably, but that is the case with most disorders that typically aren't diagnosed together.

Raziel - I do not fully understand what you mean by: "I can understand quite well that you don't really relate to ppl with schizoid PD". Can you please elaborate? As a note, I am not disagreeing with your assessment. It may be true. I just don’t know.

As a note, while I have met in person 3 other people diagnosed with Asperger's/HFA, I don't believe I have met in person anyone with Schizoid.

By the way, when I was going through the diagnosis process, I was on the fence about whether I would get diagnosed with Schizoid or Asperger's. Because it seemed I had symptoms of both.

So I got the report in the mail today and I am so irritated with it that I scarcely know what to do. Lots of incorrect details, ignoring details, and then telling me that I overfocus on details in the report!

I was mistaken; I didn't take the WMS. I took:

Wechsler IV - social Cognition
Wide Range Achievement Test - 4
California Verbal Learning Test - II
Trail Making Test Parts A & B

The basis of the evaluation seems to be

1. high verbal IQ and my average/high average scores on the WRAT - 4
2. my (supposedly) superior verbal memory on the CVLT - II (that's the test on which I used visualization).
3. average executive function on Wisconsin test (which was inaccurate due to repeat administration) and superior performance on ToL, on which she apparently ignored my moderately-severely impaired range of time scores and my 3 time violations
4. average scores on Social Perception, Affect Naming, and Faces on the WAIS-IV social cognition test, apparently ignoring my mildly-moderately impaired score on prosody and my moderately-severely impaired score on some called "Pairs" (another auditory social test). Also, some of the Faces scores were also probably inaccurate due to repeat administration.
5. I scored borderline-low probability of AS on GADS
6. they made big mistakes recording my childhood social experiences and perceptions
7. overestimating the role of childhood trauma (I almost wish I had never mentioned that)

On working memory, the behavioral results are mixed, with some studies showing deficits in working memory and some showing no group differences between autism vs. normal. Discrepancies are probably due to small samples (<10 participants in each group in some studies) and sampling variation. The most consistent result so far is that regardless of performance, fMRI suggests less prefrontal activation on working memory tasks in autism, more posterior (visual areas) activation. In our lab, I am doing working memory project with collaborator (participants are normal people), but one thing I accidentally discovered while testing my task was my huge working memory that was visually operated. We used a n-back task in which you have to remember a certain number of numbers and match the current one with the one n-back, where n = 2, 3, 4, etc, as task difficulty increases. You have to keep updating new numbers and dropping old numbers as they become irrelevant and also keep the numbers in their correct slots. I found that my performance at 16-back was still better than other people's at 3-back, which they found difficult and I found absolutely trivial, easier than breathing. I told my professor that in order to do well on n-back at high n, you should use visual instead of verbal strategy. At first, he didn't believe me, but then he tried my visual strategy, and his performance suddenly improved a lot. Another thing about working memory task is that it generally drops sharply around middle age (~50). My current working memory is considered verbal (but can be solved visually instead), and I am working on a spatial working memory task from hell. Spatial tasks can ackshuly be verbally mediated instead.

EF is made of many components and notoriously difficult to test behaviorally, so it is too early to say much about EF in autism. When going through studies on google scholar, I would take most seriously the ones that measured behavior objectively or found brain (fMRI, EEG, NIRS, etc) differences instead of self-report, parent-report, other-report questionnaires only.

For autism diagnosis, #1-3 are irrelevant, results in the opposite direction are not indicative of autism either.
#4 has been shown to correlate with IQ, e.g. reading mind in eyes task vs. FSIQ. None measure implicit social cognition (= fast, automatic social responses of NTs that autistic seem most likely to lack or reduced vs. explicit analysis of faces, affect, social conventions, etc).
#5 is relevant to childhood history, should not be used on adults during adulthood, but only in retrospect about childhood traits.
#6 can only be accurate based on parent report, not self-report. Childhood behaviors observed from other people's perspecitve are more relevant, own adulthood interpretations of childhood perceptions are least informative.
#7 no comment on this, I don't know much about it.

In my opinion, your assessment seemed to have been low on the testing for current autistic traits and reliable childhood history, while your average to superior cognitive performance played too big a role in rejecting autism.

I am also disturbed by the autism as identity perspective, I don't relate to it.